Hasta La Gadget!

As a teenager, I fell in love with fearsome and gorgeous Gods and Goddesses who –according to myths and legends of Ancient Greece –ruled the world from the top of Mount Olympus. Then, years later, upon settling in Los Angeles, I added to my Pantheon the beautiful Gods and Goddesses of Hollywood. So, as you can imagine, I take the Oscars very seriously, and follow all the brouhaha leading up to the live Sunday broadcast. And this year was no exception. But for me, along with a few good friends, the party actually started the day before, on Saturday. That’s how it went…

Los Angeles artist Don Bachardy is famous for his eloquent and informal portraits of Hollywood stars, with whom he and his late partner, Christopher Isherwood, have been friends for years. Currently, Craig Krull Gallery in Bergamot Station has an exhibition of a few dozen portraits covering several decades of Hollywood history. Here’s the beautiful Tilda Swinton, with her translucent skin and intimidating gaze. Then, there’s young, dreamy Montgomery Clift. And nearby is the girl next door, Teri Garr –as charming as ever. Let me mention a few more stars who posed for Bachardy and whose portraits are on display at the gallery: Natalie Wood and Henry Fonda, Bette Davis and Laurence Olivier, among others.

After paying respect to these Hollywood Royals, I went with my friends to Santa Monica Museum of Art to see the exhibition of work by Brian Weil (1954 – 1996), whose primary medium was photography, and whose subjects included scenes of homicide, AIDS politics, and, to put it mildly, unconventional sexual activities.

All of his photographs are black and white, and many of them are unceremoniously tacked on the walls, unframed –the way the artist preferred. His concern was neither the beauty of the subject nor the technical perfection of the print.

Many of these photographs are simply shocking –by its subject, and the raw, scratchy, grainy surfaces of the prints deliver an additional punch. Did I like the photos? No… Was I impressed? You bet… There is no way to get it out of your mind. All that reminded me of the iconic moment of The Golden Age of Italian Cinema, Roberto Rossellini’s film, Rome, Open City, with Anna Magnani running, screaming, and finally shot dead in the street.

Movie magic has many ingredients, and one that is particularly close to my heart is the art of cinematography, the way the camera shapes every frame of the movie, the way the light paints every scene. The last stop my friends and I made on Saturday in our pre-Oscar warm up was at the Getty Museum to see the exhibition of photographs by Czechoslovakia-born artist, Josef Koudelka.

His most famous photos, done in the 1960’s, are the images of Gypsies living in Eastern Europe. And then, there are his photos capturing the crash of Prague Spring by the Soviet army in 1968. Each image is worthy of not a thousand, but a few thousand words. Combining drama and spontaneity with extremely focused composition, Koudelka’s images make us aware of how much the art of cinema is informed and inspired by its older relative, the art of photography.

To learn about Edward’s Fine Art of Art Collecting Classes, please visit his website. You can also read The New York Times article about his classes here.

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Edward Goldman is an art critic and the host of Art Talk, a program on art and culture for NPR affiliate KCRW 89.9 FM. To listen to the complete show and hear Edward’s charming Russian accent, click here.

With the coming of Spring 2015, we’re noticing more and more baby bumps. Mallory Moss, co-founder of BabyNames.com, presents her list of the most eagerly awaited celebrity babies. From weeks to months, these babies are on their way to stardom!

1. William & Kate, Prince & Princess of Cambridge, due April 2015. Probably the world’s most eagerly awaited baby of 2015 is William & Kate’s second child. As most know, their first child was a son, George Alexander Louis. Controversy exists whether or not to name a daughter Diana…see 8 Reasons Why William & Kate Should Not Name their Baby Girl Diana. Suggestions for a girl include Louisa Victoria & Mary-Elizabeth Alice. Suggestion for a boy worth of royalty: Thomas Albert Claude.
2. Bethany Hamilton & Adam Dirks, due June 2015. The web was on fire when news came out that Bethany Hamilton and her husband Adam Dirks were having a baby. Bethany should find childbirth no problem as she is indeed a survivor. She fought off a shark in 2003 and then turned around to win several surfing competitions, even as recently as last year. In 2014, Bethany and Adam had to fight off competitors on the television show Amazing Race, after which their popularity soared. Our recommended baby name for a boy is Caleb Kai Hamilton Dirks and for a girl, we suggest Rebecca Leilani Hamilton Dirks.
3. Carrie Underwood & Mike Fisher, due about April 2015. With less than 2 months to go, baby Fisher just may be the first baby born on this list. In press, Carrie and Mike have joked about names but are waiting to reveal the baby boy’s name after he is born. Name recommendations include Henry “Hank” Stephen Fisher and Lulu Belle Fisher.
4. Justin Timberlake & Jessica Biel, due April 2015. Talk about star power! These A-list actors are going to have a baby race with Carrie Underwood and Mike Fisher. Due March or April, these folks won the best baby announcement award, a photo of Justin kissing Jessica’s baby bump. Our suggestion for a girl baby name is Jaycee May Timberlake; for a boy, we suggest Jordan Biel Timberlake.
5. Sophie B. Hawkins, due July 2015. Young Dashiell has a brother or sister on the way! Sophie B. Hawkins has used one of her own eggs, frozen 20 years ago, and donor sperm to create her baby bump. Since she loves the name Dashiell, we would like to suggest Daisy Jo Hawkins for a girl and Chandler Poe for a boy.
6. Terrance & Miranda Howard, due sometime this spring/summer. Did anyone catch that gorgeous baby bump on the red carpet at the Oscars last Sunday? In an amazing black dress with a gentle wrap around her bump, we wonder if her dress was Dolce & Gabbanna to match his tuxedo. Terrance’s children and grandchild are named Aubrey, Hunter, Haven, and Hazel so we think H names are the way to go. How about Hannah Mimi Howard for a girl and Hayden Jay Howard for a boy?
7. Ashlee Simpson & Evan Ross, due 2015. Although we do not know the due date, we do know that a lovely baby is on the way for Ashlee and Evan, the son of Diana Ross. We also know the proud parents-to-be will come up with a unique baby name for Bronx Mowgli’s little sib! May we suggest Catra Akila (Akila is also from “The Jungle Book”) or Gryphon Dion?

Before he was the executive producer behind the insanely successful new series “Empire,” Danny Strong wrote “Game Change,” the television adaptation of the dishy book depicting the 2008 president election. Sarah Palin was decidedly not pleased with her portrayal — which earned both an Emmy and Golden Globe for Julianne Moore — but the Alaska governor’s anger made Strong and the team behind the film very happy.

When Strong talked with HuffPost Live about “Empire” on Tuesday, host Ricky Camilleri asked about Palin’s response to “Game Change.” Strong said he’s never spoken to her personally, but her team did the film a big favor before it premiered. Strong explained:

The people that were working for her held a huge press conference the week before the film came out, and they said, ‘We have not seen this movie, but it is all lies.’ And it was kind of amazing because the amount of press we got — that they sparked by holding that press conference — propelled the film into being the most-watched HBO movie in a decade because it dominated the press cycle. And I just always thought it was strange. Why did they attack it before they had seen it and point out things that they said weren’t accurate? And then when the film came out, they said, ‘We have seen the movie now, and it’s all lies.’ And it didn’t get much media coverage because they had already sort of said it was all lies before they had seen it. It was intense, but we were grateful to the press because it was great for the movie.

Though the movie was largely perceived as a takedown of Palin, Strong thinks the reason for its success was the way it empathized with the vice presidential hopeful as a character.

“In the earliest stages of that development process, I told [director] Jay Roach our goal should be that if we could get a liberal audience to feel sorry for her at times, I think we’ll have a really cool movie,” Strong said. “And in our very first test screening, a woman raised her hand and said, ‘I’m a liberal Democrat and I hate Sarah Palin, and I couldn’t believe that at times I was tearing up for her.’ And Jay Roach and I looked at each other and we had [a moment of], ‘Yes! We did it.'”

Watch the full HuffPost Live conversation with Danny Strong here.

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Violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter joins conductor Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony for three performances of Brahms’s Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 77 on February 26-28 at 8:00. The March 1 performance at 2:00 will feature her protégé, Ye-Eun Choi, a recipient of the Anne-Sophie Mutter Foundation scholarship and winner of the 2013 European Culture Award for New Artists. The program begins with The Light That Fills the World by J.L. Adams — this year’s Grammy winner in the category of Best Contemporary Classical Composition. Following the intermission is Schumann’s Symphony No. 1, Spring.

Ms Mutter begins a European tour a few days after her last performance. “I can’t be here for the March 1 concert,” she said, “but I’m terribly excited that Ye-Eun Choi will be playing. There must have been a long line of violinists they would have liked, but they were gracious enough to accept her. She is a unique Korean woman who enrolled in my program when she was sixteen. She came as a child to study in Munich. I was very taken by her determination and also her very pure viewpoint on life as a musician — something which I have found very rarely. She plays in a very personal style and has these wonderful colors. I am very happy to have found someone who is willing to develop a unique personality and not go in a direction where success could probably have come much easier.”

Anne-Sophie Mutter and Ye-Eun Choi. Courtesy of SF Symphony

Ms Mutter was in Munich during our recent conversation. We talked about the element of celebrity that surrounds the Brahms’s violin concerto. It ranks perhaps second only to the beauty and challenging virtuosity of Beethoven’s earlier Violin Concerto in D major which premiered in 1806. An astonishing link between the composers and their concertos is super luminary violinist Joseph Joachim (1831-1907). In 1844, while still only twelve years old, the young prodigy revived Beethoven’s work and added his own cadenzas — which are still in play today. Thirty-four years later, Brahms dedicated his concerto to Joachim who played the premiere on New Year’s Day in 1879 and, again, with his own cadenzas. Though a number of violinists have since substituted their own variations — Fritz Kreisler among them — it is Joachim’s cadenzas that have remained the standard in the Brahms concerto and which Ms Mutter will present at Davies Hall. Said Ms Mutter, “Why not use the cadenza of the violinist for whom the great composer has written the piece?”

The Brahms, like many other important works of the violin repertoire, was a piece I started to study rather early. My collaboration with Karajan began in the late ’70s. I was studying it even before meeting him, when I was around twelve. He moved through repertoire quite briskly despite my young age. I was sixteen when I played the Beethoven concerto in concert for the first time. I find it interesting that someone like Joseph Joachim was such a prominent figure in the development of the big violin repertoire, particularly of the romantic repertoire. In addition to Brahms — Dvořák wrote for him, Bruch wrote for him. He had great influence on their work. This is something which has fascinated me throughout my relationship with the piece, because it shows that Joachim was not only a specialist on his instrument but was a whole musician. It’s not a typical solo violin concerto. It is really a symphonic piece of art, where the orchestra is equal to the soloist. And where the soloist very often — and it’s a lifelong task — has to blend-in when the winds have the melody. Think of the first movement where, after the eruption, the violin has to step back into the orchestra as a harmonic figure but not as the leading voice. This goes on through the first and second movements. Then you have the third movement with this Hungarian finale. It’s endlessly fascinating.

I likened the pressures of performing the Brahms concerto to that of an actor in a run of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, even the abbreviated three-hour version. How does one proceed through the day, through a tour — with such daunting repertoire? After her long history with the Brahms concerto, of keeping it warehoused in the brain and fresh on the fingertips — what continues to fuel her public performance of it?

In a way, one tries to pretend it’s a normal day. You hope that on the day of a concert, your preparation has been as much as it could be and finished to a degree where you can just lean back. But, of course, with the family and everything else, and my foundation — the ideal situation does not exist. You have to be able to perform under the wildest of circumstances. Your flight has been delayed, you’ve had no sleep, probably no food other than a banana, there’s no time to do anything and you have to rush on stage.

Anne-Sophie Mutter. Courtesy of the artist

What do I bring that’s new to it? I have done quite a number of contemporary premieres in the last twenty-five years. I think that collaborating with living composers — and learning that they are extremely open minded to very different approaches to one and the same piece. That has liberated me from falling into the trap of believing in a genuinely right interpretation. It’s always a work in progress. Are the sparks flying then as on the perfect day? Hmmm. My answer is that ideal preparation does not exist. I’m a tennis fan — think of an athlete like Roger Federer. He has great days and less-great days. In a way, a musician is like an athlete. We have that one chance. At eight o’clock, you bring everything forward — everything you’ve been thinking of, dreaming of and training yourself for. The wonderful thing with music is that you always have the chance the next evening to shed light on a different aspect of the very same piece. There are good days and bad days. Sometimes it’s a struggle. But struggle is part of the process.

During the first two weeks of March, Anne-Sophie Mutter will be on tour with conductor Andris Nelsons and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. The repertoire includes the Sibelius Violin Concerto in d minor and Shostakovich’s Symphony no. 10 in e minor. On March 10, she will make her first appearance at the newly constructed Philharmonie de Paris. Speaking of dedications, at its gala opening on January 14, violinist Renaud Capuçon played Sur le même accord (On only one chord) by Henri Dutilleux. The piece was composed for Ms Mutter in 2002. She premiered the work with Kurt Masur and the London Philharmonic Orchestra and later recorded it for Deutsche Grammophon in 2003. The track is included in the spectacular 40-CD boxed set, Anne-Sophie Mutter — The Complete Musician. Only days before the opening of the new symphony hall, the streets of Paris were filled with over three million in the “Je suis Charlie” demonstration. I asked Ms Mutter how Sur le même accord might have affected an audience that would still have been in a highly charged atmosphere. What does she think the composer had in mind while composing this piece for her?

In concert with Lambert Orkis. Photo, Dario Acosta/Deutsche Grammophon

First of all, at every concert, I always think — this could be my last. Therefore, I will give it everything I have. In human history we have learned that in moments of great disaster and desperation, people have always turned to music — to the power of music — to the empowering wonder of what music does to our emotions. I get really sad and also slightly aggressive when I see what politicians do to our cultural life. They are not acknowledging that music has a wonderfully positive power and enriching quality — particularly in moments of desperation, loneliness, disaster. Sur le même accord, as the title says — is actually a very reduced piece, sassy, and also very short. When I performed it with Kurt Masur, we always played it again as an encore because it gives the listener the chance to really delve under the skin a little better. I really don’t know what Dutilleux’s thoughts were about me when he was writing the piece, if there were any at all. This is something I cannot answer — unless I want to sound shamelessly immodest.

On the other hand, she has no hesitation in bringing her full voice to the problem of the lack of proper musical education in the schools. I asked her what would be the most important thing she could say to educators, to those on education boards, to whoever is in charge of making these budgetary decisions — who probably grew up without music education themselves. That led to a number of insights about the recent uproar created by the decision of Bavaria’s Minister-President, Horst Seehofer, to nix funding on the construction of a sorely-needed concert hall to replace Munich’s thirty-year-old Gasteig, a notorious acoustic nightmare.

“Isn’t it incredible?” she said.

I’m not originally from Munich, but this is kind-of my second home. It’s the richest state in Germany. They want to re-do the existing hall which has a catastrophic acoustic. When Leonard Bernstein opened the hall thirty years ago, here is what he wrote in the guest book: Burn it. Our Minister-President has made a terribly wrong decision and the outrage is huge. Why has he made this decision? Because you would never see him at a concert. He has no idea what he is judging over. What they want to do now — for 400 million Euros — is to try to take the hall out, physically out, and leave the skin of the building in tact. Which is impossible to do! But that’s the plan. Then they want to implant a smaller hall into it which, hopefully, will finally have a good acoustic. But Munich is a large city — with two world class orchestras — the Philharmonic and the Bavarian Radio Orchestra. But we only have one big hall. The other hall, where the Radio Orchestra has tried to perform under Mariss Jansons, has only 1,100 seats. Financially, this is going nowhere. They can never invite, for example, the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra to play there because ticket prices would go through the roof. It’s much too small. More people want to come to the concert. It’s totally crazy. Why invest 400 million Euros, possibly more, to re-do an already rotten structure instead of building something new? Then you would have an additional hall — a bad one and a good one. It’s better than only one of which nobody is sure of the outcome. I’ve had it with politicians!

So, what would I say? We do know of all the positive effects of musical training — on social behavior and on the development of the brain of a child. In a world where we live in a multicultural situation, children have to be trained early on to have respect for other cultures. They have to listen to each other — the dialogue will be something that is more important than anything else in the future. In music, this is a skill that is learned very early on — the social skills – getting to know different cultures, of listening to and having an emotional bond through music. If you look at the other activities of children — sports are great and very important. But all these activities are about one against the other. It’s competition, it’s about beating someone. Music has nothing to do with that. It’s about being together with someone and making something together. We are all here, trying our best. It leaves a positive feeling in the air.

In the Dominican Republic beachfront town of Las Terrenas, the sparkling Caribbean and the sands that fringe it are ever-present. You can use the beach as a thoroughfare to get from one part of town to another; it’s the most pleasant pedestrian route. At any time throughout the day, you can turn this way or that, and there it is again, the sea, now blue, then green. You can dine at a table on a deck just a foot or two above the sand with the lapping water only a few feet beyond, small fishing boats bobbing just offshore, bigger sailing boats swinging at anchor farther out at sea.

I’ve seen my share of Caribbean beach towns. Las Terrenas is that but more. This town was discovered by Europeans, primarily the French, about three decades ago, and today is populated by French, Italians, Brits, Danes and Germans. The strong European presence has many implications, especially when it comes to the local cuisine. Restaurants in Caribbean beach towns are typically long on jerk chicken and coconut rice. You can find those things here, I’m sure, but I didn’t notice them on any menu where we dined. Instead, French and Italian restaurants offer prosciutto and melon, beef carpaccio, pepper steak, roasted chicken, homemade pasta and fresh bread that wouldn’t be out of place in good restaurants in Paris or Tuscany, often supported by wine menus that include many options for fine, even sparkling wine — champagne, Prosecco and cava.

What can you do in Las Terrenas between meals? Here are my top 10 ways to spend your time in this charming beach town:

1. Walk to town for breakfast at the authentic Boulangerie Francaise, open seven days a week and a favorite meeting place for local expats and tourists.
2. Watch a game of petanque on the beach just before sunset at Place des Lices. Retired Frenchmen meet here each evening to play on the sand for a couple of hours before the light fades entirely. When the sun goes down, they transition from petanque to white wine.
3. Take a surf lesson at the Carolina Surf School on Playa Bonita. For $60, you can have an hour-long lesson from an enthusiastic and expert surfing coach. The school is run by Carolina Gutiérrez, a surfer who scored her first sponsorship at age 16 and was the 2004 DR Sportsperson of the Year. Classes are offered year-round.



4. Have lunch at Atlantis, also at Playa Bonita, where the French chef was once the private chef for former French President Mitterand.
5. See how Dominican Republic cigars are made by hand at Mundo Puro on Calle Principale.



6. Watch the whales. This is the season (January through March). The three- to four-hour boat trip to Samana Bay with marine mammal expert Kim Beddell includes hydrophone so you can hear the whale song. If you do not see whales your next trip is free. Cost is $59 for adults $30 for children.



7. Buy a piece of local art. Brightly colored impressions and representations of Dominican life are available around town. You can buy a piece of low-end factory street art for as little as $25. Prices are negotiable. Offer as little as 30 percent of the asking price to start.



8. Go for happy hour at the Lazy Dog, where you can sit right on the sand with the sea just feet away. Try the calamari and fried shrimp with your rum cocktail.



9. Take a long walk on the beach, read a book, swing in a hammock or indulge in any other traditional pastime for this part of the world. This is quintessential Caribbean, with the best beaches in the DR and some of the best in the world.



10. Go kite surfing. The kite-surfing school LTK’iTE offers both introductory and advanced courses December through September (when the winds cooperate best). A two-hour beginner class is $110.